WGBS News WaferGen Bio-systems Announces Open Format qPCR Platform and Strategic Realignment
2012-04-16 09:25 ET - News Release
Setting a New Standard for Flexible and Cost-Effective Nano-Scale qPCR
FREMONT, Calif., April 16, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- WaferGen Bio-systems, Inc. (OTCBB: WGBS.OB), a nano-scale qPCR Company, announced today a strategic realignment and new direction for the organization. The Company's focus will be to enable customers to perform accurate high-throughput qPCR projects for gene expression, genotyping, and target enrichment for next-generation sequencing in a simpler and more cost-effective way. Underlying this strategy is a new version of the Company's SmartChip System that will allow customers to design and execute their own experiments in an "open format." Relative to competitive offerings, it is believed that the new SmartChip System will offer best-in-class flexibility, high levels of sensitivity and dynamic range, and a very low cost per reaction.
In conjunction with its new strategic direction, the Company announced a consolidation and reorganization of its operations. The restructuring plan has resulted in the elimination of approximately 20 positions during the current fiscal quarter, as well as other cost-saving measures. As a result of these actions, the Company anticipates that its monthly burn rate will be reduced to approximately $700,000, representing a nearly 30% reduction from recent levels. The reorganization will provide the Company with more operational flexibility in the future. WaferGen Bio-systems ended the first quarter with approximately $12 million of cash on its balance sheet.
"We are pleased to announce the new strategic path for WaferGen. The overwhelmingly positive feedback from our customers validates our intention to enable researchers and CLIA labs to perform flexible qPCR reactions on a nano scale," stated Ivan Trifunovich, President and Chief Executive Officer. "The world is not created in fixed ratio matrices, and our platform will let the science drive the format necessary to answer important genomic questions. Our focus will be on WaferGen's core competencies – engineering and validation of a variety of chemistries to provide an open format for cost-effective gene expression and genotyping analysis, as well as target enrichment for NGS. Our customers will be able to load their custom content on our chips and conduct experiments of their own design by leveraging the unique features of our platform," added Mr. Trifunovich.
